BETTING.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 March 1924, Page 4

BETTING.

A CLERGYMAN S VIEW. AUCKLAND, -March i ■ Retting is ingrained in the AngloSaxon character and its prohibition is impracticable.” This statement in the report of the British Committee on Betting was criticised by the Rev .). Lamb Harvey in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, lie said that love cl

speculation with its excitements ansi desire to make money without working for it, the two things which lay behind the betting habit, were no more inherent in the Briton than, for example, in the Chinese. As to the prohibition of betting he agreed that public opin’on was lint ripe lor it, the evil would simolv he driven underground and toe law * set at defiance, hut. the committee had nothing better to propose than elimination ol the street bookm.'.vst and the iniroducion of the iotalisalor. Had these measures succeeded in New Zealand '■ On the cont rary the hotting habit had increased and was increasing. Bookmakers abounded. Here as in England betting went on in worksimps, factories and offices, producing the usual fruits of individual and social demoralisation. Mere regulation, therefore, was no cure. Dealing with the superstitions ol the betting mind, Mr Harvey said that at the Christmas meeting at Ellcrslio two horses, each numbered 13, won two races in succession. At once number 13 became the favourite for the next rare. This sounded incredible, hut it was always found that a man, and still more a woman, given to gambling was the nuist superstitious, and therefore the least rational of mortals.